Toast of the Desert
Think of Bill Loken as the accidental winery owner.
Actually, that designation also would include his wife, Gretchen, whom Loken is quick to say is the brains of the operation at their Pahrump Valley Winery ("I’m just the trophy husband," he recently told a tour group, getting giggles instead of the expected rim shot from some women who were decidedly past a certain age). But on a recent windy afternoon, Gretchen was supervising a bottling operation, so Bill Loken discussed their joint venture solo.
Conventional wisdom would have it that winery owners tend to be motivated by a love of the grape that usually involves some serious study. Before and after they consider opening their own operations, they travel around the country, maybe even around the world, looking at wineries and all of the operations associated with them to try to decide what works and what doesn’t — or at least what will work for them.
Yeah, it wasn’t that way with the Lokens.
"This was the first winery I ever set foot in," he said. "It never even crossed my mind to come here. What would I want with a winery?"
What brought the couple — residents at the time of Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was in real estate and she was a schoolteacher — to Pahrump and its unlikely winery was that great persuader, the older brother. Loken’s brother’s company had bought some real estate that included the winery, with the intention of developing the land. But it didn’t want to deal with the winery.
The original intent, Loken recalled, was to turn the place around, maybe sell it off. Instinctively, he said, they felt the place was "way underserved." One of the first projects would be a slash-and-burn renovation of the winery’s restaurant.
While Loken is loathe to voice any unkind words about those who have gone before, he did immediately sense that something was amiss at the winery, which originally opened in 1990.
"I don’t know what a winery is supposed to look like, but this doesn’t look like one," he remembered thinking.
So the couple traveled to the burgeoning wine district in Temecula, Calif., to get an idea of what a winery should look like. They took over in Pahrump in 2003 as managing partners of a group of investors.
And then a funny thing happened: The production process fascinated them.
"We got into wine after we fell in love with wine production," Loken said. "It didn’t take too long; we got the bug. It became a love affair quite quickly."
By 2005, they’d bought out the others and were the sole owners. They hired a consultant, who schooled them in the ways of winemaking and winery production.
The winery hadn’t been a success in the past, Loken felt, because an arm’s-length approach led to a less-than-stellar product. That was about to change.
"We got a college education in a very short time," he said.
And that would be in the literal sense, too. Gretchen earned a winemakers’ certificate from the University of California, Davis.
Their efforts have paid off. In one room of the newly refurbished building is a display of wines that have won competitions. Since 2004, Pahrump Valley Winery has won almost 200 national awards.
One of the Lokens’ goals was to produce at least some of their wines from Nevada-grown grapes — which, in the case of reds, had never been done on a commercial basis. And Nevada’s first commercial red wine, the 2005 Nevada Ridge Zinfandel, won a gold medal. That wine is no longer available, but this summer they’ll release Nevada’s first cabernet sauvignon, first merlot and third zinfandel.
Some of the grapes are grown elsewhere in the state — Loken said researchers have found that white grapes tend to do better in the northern part of the state, red grapes in the southern — but the Lokens grow zinfandel, planted in 1993 or 1994 and used for the first time in 1995, and syrah. (For some wines, they bring in grapes from California.)
And if you’ve heard the story, which sounds apocryphal, that the first vines planted at the winery were destroyed by wild horses, Loken said it’s true, and happened in the early ’90s. Wild horses no longer pose a threat, he said, because of development in Pahrump since then.
Rabbits, on the other hand, tend to love the tender young shoots.
"If we could make rabbit wine," he said with a sigh, "we’d be bigger than Gallo."
Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@review journal.com or 702-383-0474.
